India has bio-fortified crop varieties to deal with malnutrition, says CGIAR expert

Posted on by

India has developed some bio-fortified crops, such as wheat and millets, fortified with zinc, iron, and vitamins, and they should be promoted in the system to fight against malnutrition with the government adopting a rice fortification plan, an expert has said.

In an interaction with businessline on Wednesday, Ravinder Grover, programme lead of HarvestPlus, which works across CGIAR as part of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), stressed the importance of bio-fortification needs.

Working on pilots

“During Covid-19, consciousness developed about taking nutritious food as people were seeking to know which food items have natural zinc. A structured demand improvement will help develop bio-fortified crops as farmers will also be tempted to grow those,” Grover said.

Currently, HarvestPlus is working with some government departments to implement pilot projects by distributing commodities made from bio-fortified wheat and millets. But Grover said that there is a need to scale it up by taking up the issue with the Food Corporation of India.

He said staple crop bio fortification is a practical, proven, demand-led response to hidden hunger -especially children and particularly among the hundreds of millions of smallholder farming families who eat mostly what they grow themselves, cannot afford nutritionally diverse diets, and are also not easily reached by food fortification or supplementation initiatives.

To address the issue in India, HarvestPlus, founded 20 years ago, has identified key public, private, and NGO partnerships, its spokesperson said.

Grover said HarvestPlus supports the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR)-National Agricultural Research System (NARS), State agricultural universities (SAUs), and international agricultural research organisations such as ICRISAT, CIMMYT and IRRI in breeding, testing and release of zinc wheat, zinc rice and iron pearl millet.

Artificial fortification

He cited the examples of DRR Dhan 45 and DRR Dhan 49 varieties paddy, both fortified with zinc, released in 2016 and 2019, respectively. Both the varieties, of 130 days duration, are developed by ICAR-Indian Institute of Rice Research, Hyderabad, have yield of 5 tonnes/hectare, are comparable with other varieties and if promoted farmers may not refuse.

Similarly, there are wheat varieties developed by Karnal-based Indian Institute of Wheat & Barley Research which are fortified with both iron and zinc.

However, the Centre has decided to opt for artificial fortification by spending ₹2,680 crore annually. The government has expressed its commitment to ensure the nutritional security of the country through fortified rice distribution across government food safety net schemes, which is distributed from the Central Pool stock, managed by the Food Corporation of India. There is a target to achieve 100 per cent fortification of FCI-held rice by March 31, 2024.